Hello
by dear cecil
Summary: Scout needs advice from the team about how to garner the attention of the opposite sex. She gets it, all right. Based on Magellan's genderbend of Scout.


Based on Magellan's genderbend of Scout, whose voice I imagine as Harley Quinn's.

* * *

"You gotta tell me how you do it," Scout said without preamble, hauling herself up onto the kitchen counter. She leaned her elbows on her knees, resting her chin in her hands. "I mean," she continued, mumbling, "it's like you ain't even trying, and you just get him."

Sniper raised an eyebrow, looking up from her newspaper. "Beg pardon?"

Scout leaned back, kicking her feet out as she gestured randomly. "You know… the way you've got Solly all obsessed with you. He fawns on you all the time, calls you those cutesie little names, stuff like that; whereas I got jack-squat, sister." She crossed her arms. "So come on, have a little girl talk. Let me in on your secrets when it comes to taming the savage beast, or whatever."

Sniper tried and failed to hide her snort into her coffee cup. "Look, Scout, I'm glad you think I'm a good role model or something, but I'm honestly not." Putting her things down, she raised her hands, palms out. "I wouldn't know the first thing to tell you about dating. I was an awkward girl and I'm an awkward woman. Soldier is just…"

Scout hopped off the counter as Sniper fell into her own thoughts, and walked as quickly as she could out of the kitchen. When she'd put a hallway or two between herself and Sniper, she sighed, leaning against the wall. It really didn't seem fair that she could grow up with seven older sisters and never learn one reliable thing about how to attract someone she liked, rather than someone she just wanted to go with for appearances.

She was just about to kick the wall when she heard Heavy's booming voice coming from the makeshift rec-room of the base. He sounded like he was arguing with Medic. Feeling like a good argument was just the sort of thing she needed to cheer herself up, Scout wandered into the room, a grin on her face. "What are you two birdbrains 'debating' about this time?"

Medic turned to her, face thunderous, but greeted her politely all the same. Heavy shouted out a jovial hello then turned right on back to Medic. From the chess board between them, it was obvious they were arguing about some stupid strategy thing again; Scout had never liked chess or all the confusing rules involved with it. So, to keep herself from having to hear about them, she dragged a chair over to the table and patted Heavy's arm.

"Sorry, Big Guy, but it looks like the Doc over here is in the right." Heavy opened his mouth to respond to her, but Scout barreled on. "I got a way more important problem that you guys might be able to help me out with, though."

Medic adjusted his glasses and turned to her, but she could see the smirk he was hiding (probably just because she'd said he won the argument, but it still put her hackles up). "And what would that be?"

"Well, I guess you might be able to help more than Heavy," Scout said thoughtfully. Medic looked even more smug. "So, Doc; you're a fairy, right? How do you get guys to pay attention to you when you wanna mack 'em?"

Medic spluttered; Scout had to struggle not to laugh at him. "Well, I—"

Heavy leaned over the table to clap him on the shoulder, grinning. "Do not be ashamed, Doktor!" He turned to Scout, looking at her with the kindly expression he usually adopted with her. "I will tell you all about how Medic grabbed the attention of Papa Heavy, da?" Not bothering to wait for a reply, he slung his arm over Scout's shoulders, effectively trapping her without realizing it. She froze like a deer in the headlights, and thought her expression must look just like Medic's right now: Horrified, embarrassed, but also sort of morbidly interested for no good reason and oh God—

"Medic and I, we are team for many years, working together on battlefield. I do not like him at first; he is German, I am Russian. Not to be mixed." He looked apologetically at Medic, then went on. "But we are having many similar interests! Doktor enjoys classical music, so do I; Doktor loves the fighting, so do I; and many other things. Eventually, he is becoming interested in me, so we talk much. He tells me I am strong, like bear; I tell him he is loyal, like dog. Doktor cuts me with Ubersaw and lets me bleed to death. Then he asks me if I want sandwich, I say yes, and look at us now! Very happy."

Scout sighed in relief even as Heavy slapped her back again, jolting her forward. "For a second, big man, I thought you were gonna tell me about all the lovey-dovey stuff!"

"Scout wants to hear lovey-dovey?" Heavy asked, eyes twinkling. "Doktor is very affectionate; first week after he kills me, he pushes me into medical bay—"

"Mein Liebling," Medic interrupted desperately, "I feel so very hungry all of the sudden! Please accompany me to the kitchen at once." He bustled out of the room, trying just as hard to avoid Scout's eye as she was trying to avoid his.

Heavy rose up obediently, but bent down to whisper more to Scout. "Doktor sometimes asks to go to one place, and it is actually plan for date. Try this, maybe."

"Heavy?" Medic's voice echoed desperately through the hall, and Heavy hurried away, bidding Scout good luck on luring in her man. Shell-shocked, Scout slumped in her seat, staring at the wall.

"Yeah, good luck. Good luck trying to forget what the hell you just said, ugh!"

"What's wrong wi' you, lass?" Demo asked as she slumped into the chair Medic had been in, clutching her bottle of Scrumpy. "Bad day, or just a bad moment inside a day?"

"Bad day, nightmare moment," Scout said, burying her face in her hands. "Did Heavy ever tell you about him and Medic? Because that's the story I just got, and I really just didn't need that, at freaking all."

Demo looked faintly green. "He tell you the whole thing, or the abridged?"

"The Doc dragged him out before he could do anything worse than tell me about their first, uh, 'date.'"

"You're lucky. He told me the whole damn thing." Scout winced, and Demo patted her forearm, sighing. "That's how I felt. Luckily, I was stinking blind by the time he got about halfway through, so I've only got a bit of trauma instead of… I don't know. However much I would have had if I'd learned about their diddling, I suppose."

"Oh my God, don't even say those words, what are you even doing—" Scout grasped Pyro's entrance as a gift from God, leaving her to deal with Demo; she needed to get out of the goddamn twilight zone or whatever that place had become. As she ran from the rec-room toward her bedroom (it seemed like it would be a proper safe haven), she slammed smack into the back of the cloaked Spy, who was lingering outside of their Engineer's shop for what was probably the millionth time.

"Aw, jeez, do you really gotta just stand around like that? Nobody can even see you to avoid you." She rubbed the top of her head, glaring up at Spy. He was several inches taller than she, and didn't look at all apologetic, even though he _should_. He should have been groveling at her feet for being so damn inconsiderate, really.

"Pardon, mademoiselle," he said airily, "but if you would simply walk at a normal pace, it would not matter if you could see me or not; I would merely need to step out of your way, as I do for anyone else who passes. Medic and Heavy passed mere moments ago at a reasonable speed—"

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry," Scout said quickly. She didn't want to hear any more about Heavy and Medic passing by, mainly because the kitchen, where they had said they were going, was in the opposite direction, and Medic's office was… She paled, which Spy seemed to take as a sign of her guilt.

"Do not feel too bad. I should have anticipated you at some point, as your room is very close." He touched her arm in a somewhat kind way, then turned back to look at the Engineer's door, clearly dismissing her to go do whatever silly, girlish things he assumed she was going to do.

Instead, Scout bit her lip and stood with him for a minute until he turned back.

"Is there something you needed?" His expression was wry.

"Actually, I figured that, since I'm here, and you're here, I could ask you for some advice and stuff. You know. Because you're all…" She looked him over. "Smart? Well-traveled? I don't know."

Spy looked between her and the door a few times before finally shrugging, and waving her down the hallway. As they went toward the direction of her room (Spy never liked to have conversations in hallways; she didn't really get it, but it probably had something to do with how paranoid the Spook always seemed) he pulled out his cigarette case, looked down at her glare, and put it back into his jacket with a long-suffering sigh.

"You can smoke as soon as you ain't near me," Scout said as she kicked open her door. It swung to the side and hit the wall, making her wish, once again, that she could just get a stupid doorstop. With a shrug, she flopped onto her bed and stared at him through her bangs. Spy was still standing near the doorway, but he had closed the door until there was only a crack left open. "So."

"What is it you wanted my counsel on?" Spy asked. He sounded casual, but she could tell from his eyes that he liked the attention. She could also tell from his eyes that, as usual, Spy was having difficulty keeping his eyes in one place while he spoke to a woman. Grinding her back teeth, she flipped over and sat up, grabbing her pillow as casually as possible and hugging it to her chest.

Scout might have wanted a man's attention, but she didn't want Spy's, especially when it was so… sketchy.

"You're a romantic type, right? Candle-lit dinners, walking on the beach, holding ladies' hands and walking them through gay Pair-ee?"

"Hopefully I am not so trite, but, yes, I believe one could call me a romantic." He brushed invisible dust off of his arm and sniffed. "Were you looking for instruction on wooing the opposite sex?"

Scout twirled a strand of her hair with a finger nervously. "Well, yeah, when you put it like that. I guess. But not, like… not all smoochy, waltzing and eating snails and stuff, just like…" She shrugged helplessly. "I don't know, getting somebody to notice you. And not just keep on running by. You've probably never had trouble like that though," she added quickly.

Spy pulled the single, stiff-backed wooden chair in her room over to the wall opposite her bed, sat down, and crossed his legs. "When I was around your age, I was…" He thought for a second. "Well, really, I was a bit like the other team's Scout." He snorted. "Although, I did have more manners than that boy does, do not be mistaken. I was just as gawky and unsure of myself, though."

Scout fought the urge to twist her hands together. "So, how did you get out of that?"

He shrugged unhelpfully. "I just decided one morning that I was sick of being so awkward. I loved women, and I knew I could get women to love me, so that day when I went out I said hello to every girl I met."

Scout's eyebrows drew together. "All you said was _hello_ and all of a sudden you were some freaking Casanova?" She frowned at him. "Gonna need a full story, Spook."

He smiled wistfully. "I said hello to one girl in my class at university, and she told me to get lost, because our families hated each other, and because I always broke her projects in Physics… so I told her I wanted to get lost in her sheets, and she smacked me with her book bag." Spy sighed. "I fell in love with that girl, so I said hello to her every day from then on, and all she ever did was hit me, and I realized… that's what it takes, to be successful."

Scout stared at him. Not only did it seem like every man she asked for advice was insane ("my love interest hit me, and then I realized I could never be without them!"), but Spy had given her absolutely no advice. He just told her an anecdote about how retarded he was.

"Can you explain that more, or are you just telling me that being a freak will get me a man when I'm older?"

Spy smiled at her like she was a child who couldn't understand a math problem. "Perseverance is what I'm talking about, Scout. And the self-confidence it takes to keep submitting yourself to that sort of indignity. It takes a strong person to constantly bare their feelings, even if it's just through one word, non?"

"You know, Spook, I thought you were just loopy, but that sort of makes sense." She smiled at him, and he nodded.

"Well, if that's all you needed—" He stood up to leave, but Scout had one last question.

"So, wait a second, Spy," she said. "What am I supposed to do if I try all of that and it still doesn't work out? Like he ignores me, or he pays attention to me and then I found out he just doesn't like me?"

Spy stuck a cigarette between his lips, toying with his lighter as he thought about it. "There are two choices," he said finally. "You can either give up, as I eventually did with my first love… or you can keep standing outside of their door, waiting for the day they finally hear you knocking." He shut her door softly, and she heard him cloak before he walked away.

Scout had a lot to think about. She kept thinking about it for the rest of the day, as she watched her teammates interact: Sniper leaning casually on Soldier's head as he pored over his map of the battlefield in the kitchen, Medic and Heavy chatting as they made dinner for the team, Spy always placing himself in a spot of the room where he could see Engineer, Pyro patting the Demo's shoulder as she told stories about her life on the rec-room sofa.

It seemed like, somehow, everybody had managed to get paired up in one way or another, while Scout was left alone. Just like it had been when she was living with all of her sisters. Just like it had been when she'd been going to that stuffy old Catholic school. Just like she sometimes felt it was going to go for her whole life, not that she would tell anybody.

As she flopped onto her bed in just her nightgown, Scout clenched her fists, making up her mind. If Spy was brave enough to do it—_Spy_, who always ran in the opposite direction of the fight so he could hide and sneak around and never get stuck in the middle—then she was more than brave enough to do it, too, damn it! Even if the concept was terrifying. And even if she'd never actually done anything like it before.

And even if she was pretty damn sure that she would be giving her heart to a guy who didn't even want it.

"I can fucking do it," Scout told the ceiling.

* * *

"Hey, chucklenuts!" Scout yelled the next morning as she ran onto the field, adrenaline pumping through her harder than it seemed it ever had.

The RED Scout looked at her, his game face on as he ran to meet her. "What's up, skirt?"

As she raised her bat, Scout smiled. "Hello!"


End file.
